Greedy Goblin

Monday, November 9, 2015

Why revolutions and kickstarters fail

A week passed since my demand and the Goon leadership didn't ban tear harvesting. Surprised? I somewhat am, since openly rejecting to stop being horrible people (even just as a lip service) isn't the smartest move when someone asks for crowdfunding. Reminding old and informing new players about the true face of The Mittani and him rejecting to distance himself from it had a devastating effect on his project. On its first day they got $16K pledged. In the next 5 days they got $13K. Kickstarter campaigns are front-loaded with constantly declining support, as the loyal backers pledge at the start. If the following days will be like the last 5 (they won't be), they'll end up with $100K, and Kickstarter only pays them if all the $150K is pledged.

Please note that absolutely no other community figure called against the book, so its failure is either my doing, or it was dead before start because of the incompetence of The Mittani. Goonies, pick your poison. Being smug stinks, but I can't help it. My demands contained no humiliating or harmful items: they didn't have to mention my name or my blog, they didn't have to give up any in-game activity or asset, all I asked them to give useful information instead of bully to the players they defeated in highsec PvP. Rejecting that can't be interpreted any other way than open declaration of being horrible people in real life, the consequences be damned. They didn't want that $150K anyway.

There is a much less fun topic for today though. I started my series with a small PS about obvious hypocrisy. Comment section exploded. Smelling blood, I wrote a whole post about hypocrisy. Burning and surprisingly supportive comments. Same on Reddit. Comes Friday with the smoking gun, the pre-made slide that destroyed "drunken slip" excuse. Reddit providedconsensual support, forcing the Goon who created the topic to delete his account to stop the topic from spreading. Goons went into damage control, citing "it was long time ago" and "he apologized" and "double jeopardy" (show me a space lawyer and I saw you a desperate man). Comes Sunday with record high weekend comments, continuing support.

Then came Monday with a strange plot twist: I wanted the bad activity to end. Reddit went back to normal with everyone calling me madman, just one day after full support.

Dear people who were with me from Thursday to Sunday, but abandoned me on Monday: you are shit! Those who never were with me are just wrong. Yes, this makes the first group worse than Lucas Kell. You were ready to lynch the man, waiting for me to lead the march with the torches and pitchforks, but you disappeared when the target turned out to be the crime of the man instead of the man himself. The Mittani isn't bad because he born that way. He is bad for doing bad things. If you do the same bad things, you are bad too. What did he do? Found a moron, collected evidence of his weakness, made his situation worse with lies and then humiliated him for it in public without giving him any tip how to stop being a moron. Then he crowned all these by telling others to join him until the guy can't take no more.

On Monday I revealed that I want it to end. You wanted him to end just so you can get back doing it! This is why revolutions fail: people kill the old leaders, just to do the same themselves. Admit it: you enjoy a good cup of tears, just as the next guy. You told others to "kill urself", just as the next guy. Just as the next guy who was unlucky enough to be on stage. To make a change, you must get rid of the evil act, not the man who did it. I believe that The Mittani is not the devil, he can become a good person one day, though I wouldn't hold my breath. But as long as people go out and make other player cry, instead of just to lose a ship, EVE won't be a better place, with or without him.

Of course I don't expect many people to learn from this. It's much easier to yell "mad as a box of frogs". hate The Mittani and keep collecting tears. I however do expect The Mittani and his bunch to realize that if they want any success in the Real World, they must uphold a somewhat decent image and this doesn't fly together with openly being a toxic bully to other players in video games they play.

29 comments:

Provi Miner
said...

Hmm honest issue, outrage always out pulls honesty. Ok so let me say this, I don't do reddit. In fact just here and eve 24 is all I do. However you should think about this: lets compare mittens to asad both do bad things, however what is your alternative?

The alternative to assad is the assumption of a terrorist organization that makes him look like a loving puppy.

what is the alternative to mittens?

Consider the effort eve goes into honoring sean smith? its seems correct, however there is a post by smith being greatful for the death of a fellow eve member (some months before his death). My point is mittens we know the evil scumball who rises in that toxic system should mittens fall we don't he might even be smarter and more sneaky than mittens.

Your analysis about the speed at which Kickstarter donations come is incorrect in most cases. Yes, only the most loyal generally make the first donations; however, if word about the project spreads to a wide audience (something to which you are contributing by posting about it), the sheer number of people who learn about it compensates for the generally lower enthusiasm. If a project fails to get funded, it is usually because it is an exceedingly stupid project with few interested people or because the word did not get out to the target market.

Only a few days after creation, they've reached almost 30k. Despite the rapid dropoff you predict, I strongly suspect the project will reach its goal - even if The Mittani has to "donate" 100k of his own money to get access to the other 50k in donations.

@Provi Miner: the problem with The Mittani isn't that he's the most evil man in EVE. It's that he is the most powerful evil man in EVE. Most people simply give up trying to fight back such man. A more numerous, much more toxic, but individually weaker bunch of evildoers meet with resistance.

@blachawk: the project itself is worthless. Those playing EVE know the story, those not playing don't care. Why would anyone hearing from it would feel the urge to donate? The target audience were the involved EVE players who are concerned about the future of EVE and hope that a book would get new players. However they are already informed, since they are strongly involved in the community. Now, your second prediction can be true, that the kickstarter is just a scam and The Mittani has the money and the last day the funding will be complete. There is nothing anyone can do about it, except recording the state of the funding to show the strange growth to warn for future scams.

Kickstarter projects are usually an inverted bell curve. Most of the money comes in the first and last days. That makes it quite unpredictable sometimes. To make the last day donations work, they need to make a large media campaign now.

"To make a change, you must get rid of the evil act, not the man who did it."How do you stop evil acts? by making it not worth. for example:(i don't play eve, no idea if it exists)ccp makes tear harvesting reportable. you create an ingame report, attach the message / quote the chat log + name + location + time-stamp.=> if it is against the rules of harassment / verbal abuse, the offender gets a warning. if it happens more often than x / time, he gets a temp ban on his one account. repeated offenders get a temp ban on all their accounts. hard cases get all their accounts perm banned. (btw, the most important is that they get the feedback, not the punishment itself. the fact that others disapprove of your behavior might just change quite a few already without a ban)

on a curious note: if an accounts gets banned, what happens with plex? net win for ccp or donated or refunded?

I don't think such reports could work.Chats are not necessarily in english. So in that case CCP not only has to deal with a foreign language, but also with slang, abbreviations etc.

In my opinion some players want to be badasses. In real life they don't dare to behave like that because of the consequences. But in EVE there are nearly no consequences for asshole-behavior.Fortunately most of those players are not smart enough, to be as bad as they want to be. Those players gank and collect tears.And I'm glad, there are other players, that are not like that. I mean, there is a video from EVE Vegas, where a WH hunter tells a bit about his play-style. He said, he and his fellows tell their prey what they did wrong. So in long-term their prey gets better and the hunt is more exciting for them.

@Elizabeth Nornn: here is no doubt that many people were negative by themselves. I never claimed otherwise. But can you point at a community figure (someone known) who openly rejected the book, instead of just sitting in silence or calling for support?

Those who posted after the obvious failure of the Kickstarter don't count, just those who posted before release.

The only "community figure" (guy recognized by anyone outside of his corp) in these topics were Jeffraider and he only posted jokes instead of anything serious (it's Jeffraider after all).

Can you cite anyone with a name? A blogger, a current or former CSM, a CEO of a significant alliance? Anything?

You are just upset that while indeed many people disliked this propaganda crap from the start, only I had the guts to stand up against it, therefore all the glory comes to me, even if the book could be a fail without me. But hey, if you see a titan drifting out of the POS shield but ignore it because "maybe it's a trap", all the glory goes to the guy in the bomber who shoots it all night. Morale of the story: if you dislike something, do something about it instead of sitting in silence, wishing and hoping.

I wonder, will your ego even permit you to consider that the kickstarter might fail regardless of what you say?150000$ is a high number for a book, its about 4 good year salaries in most western countries. So unless the writer is going to spend 4 years on it, it's on the high side.That coupled with the fact that the target audience is small and thus limited, makes it an ambitious project.And ambitious projects fail quite often.As an imperium player myself I have not backed the project because I find the rewards lacking in value and I've never ever read a game based story that was actually good. There are probably a lot of eve players that feel the same way, so while I do consider it unlikely that it will actually succeed, your habit of claiming success for things which would have happened even if you simply had never existed at all is a bit odd. Unless of course you have actual proof that it was your post and your post alone that made people not donate money which they otherwise would have done.

Actually my ego permitted to consider it in the post "so its failure is either my doing, or it was dead before start because of the incompetence of The Mittani. Goonies, pick your poison."

Can I objectively prove that it was my doing and couldn't happen without me? No. I can prove the following:- I called against it multiple times before Kickstarter went live- I had huge traffic and Reddit reference on these posts- Many community figures and CCP devs openly supported it- No one else "with a name" called against it- It failed

So there are two conclusion:- I did it, against practically everyone- It happened on its own and I was the only one who predicted its fail and/or dared to speak against The Mittani.

I think this demonstrated what happens when you take a community for granted. There are thousands of actual human beings in the CFC only a handful have supported this - I don't think they listen to you.

I like kickstarters, in the last year I've put several hundred dollars into them.

I won't put a cent into this because although I'm in the CFC the people who have spun out their media business interests have behaved appallingly toward members of the community out of the game.

Let's not forget only recently the CFC where threatening to remove people who wrote for other media outlets and regularly threaten to expel people from their social group for out of game bullshit.

They then have the cheek, indeed the hubris, to expect this same community to fund their new business to the tune of $150k.

Whilst the small clique of who play Eve-offline on jabber may have swung behind this, the vast majority of the adults who play this game to have fun with their friends saw this for what it was - someone trying to monitise the community and believing just because many enjoy the ingame narrative they'd stump up the cash to fund someone's commercial project.

That's my reason for not supporting this and it has zero to do with ingame activities. If you want me to give you cash stop treating me like a pap link and more like a person.

Dertydan is a community figure in that many people recognize him from reddit outside his corp. Sure he's mostly known for making jokes and shitposting but, when he's serious it has a large impact and people take note because he's rarely serious. I'm not saying you haven't contributed but, I would consider the genuinely large negative reaction from reddit in part of the equation and it was dertydan leading a large part of that charge.

150k for a book was absurdly over ambitious. That Author has never made that much from any of his books and they want to advance him 90k?

It was stupid and it's what upsets me about Kickstarters refusal to acknowledge the rules of Capitalism. If you create a good product people will buy it and you will profit.

Why should we pay you create something that may or may not be good and worth buying?

It's bailing out the creators so they are free to fail. Crappy product? Oh well they made 90k already...

What upsets me most about this is CCPs support. Why are they supporting this? Why does one EVE player get handed this advantage over everyone else?

CCP should not pick favorites.

Finally, CCP should be smart enough to know that Goons are the reason EVE is dying.

Goons will say it's because CCP sucks or the game is boring, but that isn't the case. The game is still fun but Goons have removed the incentive to play.

Goons and PL are essentially the same group. A Cartel if you want to call them that.

They have control over nearly all Super Capital Construction allowing them to control the only weapon capable of presenting any real challenge to them.

Goons by the hundreds rat in Carriers out in deep sov null. All in a fleet and all with Cynos. They are too far away for any large force to sneak up on, making them nearly unkillable. One Goon pilot I know makes up to 40 Billion ISK per week doing this 10 hours a day with 7 accounts.

That's alot of income with zero risk. (he has never lost a carrier)

Beyond the safety of Null (partial fix = make all stations dockable), there's the fact the biggest source of Alliance Level Income is Passive Moon Mining.

It doesn't take a genius to see that Passive Income encourages players to form larger and larger groups so that the resource can be dominated.

Good Luck finding a good r64 moon anywhere in the game not owned by Goons or PL.

Imagine 10 small primitive tribes and only one source of clean drinking water. For a short time every tribe fights each other for temporary access until two are smart enough to team up so they can beat any other tribe and control it, then six team up to defeat the two and because they are the only healthy ones with access to clean water, they are never challenged again.

Next, this whole clusterfuck has created a game where blobbing is glamorized with large horribly unfun battles like BR (or whatever).

New pilots aren't likely to fight those battles! Make solo and small gang better and you will get more new pilots!

There should be a balancing mechanic for blobbing and ECM that makes it so 10 pilots can't jam a solo pilot and have reduced dps via some mechanic.

Finally, what's the end game? As a current player or new player what's your end game?

Right now the only real options are Join Goons or Join PL and most people don't want to be part of the problem, so they quit.

As a new small alliance just getting started in EVE how insanely absurd is it to believe you will be able to grow and eventually take a whole constellation of Null Sec for your self? and maybe even be a super power in EVE?

The fact is that it's impossible. The only way to get Sov and Hold it is to join a mega coalition and give them control of your alliance.

Goons have won EVE, it's time for CCP to step in and either introduce mechanics that destroy them or to manually disband their alliances and coalitions every time they attempt to reform.

Ask your self this. If goons were to fail cascade tomorrow and Mittins quit the game with all the sov opening up and every member of the coalition turning on each other for control, how many tens of thousands of players would resub and start playing again?

"The point is people are trying fund a commercial media enterprise by monitising the community"What they are doing is trying to get a decent author to write the book. That costs, and the author certainly won't do it out of charity. They aren't asking for loads for themselves, they aren't even asking for a lot per copy. If plenty of people want the book and are willing to pay $15 for it then it will work. If not, then obviously the community doesn't want it enough. It's not hubris and it's not greed, it's basic business. You should be happy that someone has actually bothered to put this to a decent author and that the author is willing to do it at all. If it fails, we're unlikely to see a similar quality author offering the same, and we certainly won't see anything like an EVE movie.

> So there are two conclusion:> - I did it, against practically everyone> - It happened on its own and I was the only one who predicted its fail and/or dared to speak against The Mittani.

I'm curious as to which of these you will end up adopting as your narrative. The second is more likely - most funding projects fail, especially when they are chasing an ambitious amount of cash like this. The other elevates your self importance to new heights. I know which conclusion is more likely to be correct and I've got a reasonably good idea which one you will adopt as your narrative.

"if he is a decent author, he'll write a decent book that sells well, so he can be rewarded decently"Sure he will, he just won't write it about EVE. He has another job. He's not going to put that aside to write an EVE novel unless he's guaranteed a certain number of sales, which is what the kickstarter does. Remember, you're not donating to a charity, you're pre-purchasing the book. That's what a kickstarter is.

If it succeeds at the kickstarter then it already did sell. They don't need to laugh at anything. If it fails, then sure enough it wouldn't sell, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the book, there's just no market for it.

Really the question comes down to "do you want to see someone write an EVE novel". If the answer is no, don't pay into the kickstarter.

"Ask your self this. If goons were to fail cascade tomorrow and Mittins quit the game with all the sov opening up and every member of the coalition turning on each other for control, how many tens of thousands of players would resub and start playing again?"I'm going to go with zero tens. If CCP destroyed goons (which is the only way goons are going anywhere) the game would be done. CCP simply wouldn't be able to fund development anymore with the loss of that many players, and most players that left didn't do so because of goons. People don't leave because somewhere in space someone has more stuff than they do. They leave because the game mechanics are boring as sin. Getting rid of goons won;t make CCP better developers.

@Roger: no, the question comes down to "do you want to see someone write an EVE novel in cooperation with that sumbag The Mittani "

@Last anon: true, if CCP would artificially destroy Goons, the game would be done. But the game is done by them artificially supporting Goons. The solution would be not supporting anyone artificially, just provide the server and client and let players sort out the rest.

"no, the question comes down to "do you want to see someone write an EVE novel in cooperation with that sumbag The Mittani"What's a sumbag?

And yes, I'd like to see an EVE novel regardless of who it is that pushes for it. Having seen the AMA with the author, it's pretty clear that Mittani won't even be involved in the editorial process which is even better. You may hate Mittani, but he's got a good author connected with CCP and that's a good thing. Trying to stop it isn't hurting Mittani (especially since he's rich and any royalties from the book are irrelevant to him), it's hurting EVE and it's hurting CCP. If it fails, it's unlikely we'll ever see another content creator trying to get an EVE novel made.

@Roger: if The Mittani won't be involved, then why is he involved? I mean why not CCP hired the author?

This would be a crappy propaganda book for The Imperium (retroactively renamed from CFC) and stopping it prevents more ignorant people join the minions of The Mittani to pay his mortgage via PLEX affiliate links and Kickstarters.

"This would be a crappy propaganda book for The Imperium (retroactively renamed from CFC) and stopping it prevents more ignorant people join the minions of The Mittani to pay his mortgage via PLEX affiliate links and Kickstarters."The Mittani doesn't pay a mortgage. What part of "rich" is causing the problem. The guy could roll around in cash all day with no problems. He's a trust fund kid.

And how does stopping the book stop people wanting to join the Imperium? Not mentioning the book might do that, but whether the kickstarter passes or fails is irrelevant from the Imperium's point of view, and whether there's a book about it or not, they did win the war. If you look up articles about it now, they are very one-sided. At least the author of this book is going out of his way to get direct collaboration from groups that opposed the CFC during the war.

The thing is, everyone is talking about them, that's enough to make sure people are joining (and their member count supports this). You've probably diverted more people to the Imperium by crusading against them than they would gain from the book. Think about how many people come to your blog because of people posting on reddit about how bad they think you are. Same thing.

@Roger: if he is rich, why is he running a kickstarter begging for pennies? You are trying your marketing shit on the worst possible person. If someone yell "I'm rich" I know he means "I'm in desperate need of your money" (which doesn't mean he's poor, the billionaire needing another 3 B for a merger is a good example). Someone who is rich (meaning "can afford whatever he wants") doesn't tell me he's rich, he just buy the stuff he wants and ignores me.

The book has the special ability to reach non-EVE player Sci-Fi fans. They won't read EVE material, the current "news" won't reach them. The book will make them try out EVE - as members of the glorious Imperium. It's a shitty propaganda move, supported by CCP.

"whether the kickstarter passes or fails is irrelevant from the Imperium's point of view," Then why the hell are you arguing here?!

"the author of this book is going out of his way to get direct collaboration from groups that opposed the CFC during the war" it has two problems:- it's a lie- even if it's true, the book will then serve as Imperium + TEST + PL propaganda (BL and N2S already disbanded). It's in the core of the Imperium narrative that their true enemy is PL and NC. while other groups are irrelevant. If 1000 guys join Karmafleet, 1000 to PH and 1000 to Dreddit, The Mittani becomes stronger against the groups he really fights.

If I'm recruiting to the Imperium, - again - why are you here to convince me to stop? Laugh instead in silence!

"if he is rich, why is he running a kickstarter begging for pennies?"Probably because he wants to stroke his ego and pushing for a kickstarter like this is better than just flashing his cash around. TMC really won't be gaining much (if anything) for the book.

"The book has the special ability to reach non-EVE player Sci-Fi fans"But then they don't play EVE, and even if they looked it up and joined now, the only information they are likely to see is the already prevalent news stories about how the CFC won the battle. That's already the way it's written in history. This book has more chance of getting other people's stories across. That's why the author has already had discussions with TEST members about it.

""whether the kickstarter passes or fails is irrelevant from the Imperium's point of view," Then why the hell are you arguing here?!"I'm not in the Imperium. The way I see it, there' a good opportunity to get new blood into the game and push EVE beyond being confined to just a game. I really don;t care who backs EVE books, as long as the authors get fairly free reign on the direction of the book and that CCP authorises it. Trying to ruin that because of someone like the Mittani is really just feeding him and destroying EVE.

"- it's a lie- even if it's true, the book will then serve as Imperium + TEST + PL propaganda (BL and N2S already disbanded). It's in the core of the Imperium narrative that their true enemy is PL and NC. while other groups are irrelevant. If 1000 guys join Karmafleet, 1000 to PH and 1000 to Dreddit, The Mittani becomes stronger against the groups he really fights."Well we know it's not a lie as they've already published interviews with TEST members about it. Mittani is not the author.

And sure, people might read the book and join those groups. Right now though if people read about the battle the only thing they see is goon propaganda, since that's all over the news. Hell, even the national news sites over here were flag waving for CFC. I welcome a more balanced view from the author of this book.